Barry Goldwater and John Andrews

John Andrews, the recent
Republican candidate for Governor, has always looked to Barry Goldwater as
a role model. One portion of the Goldwater legacy that Andrews probably
didn't want, but picked up anyway, was losing the election by a landslide.

In the last half of the 20th
century, only one Republican Presidential candidate has failed to carry
Colorado -- Barry Goldwater in 1964.That year Goldwater pulled in 38% of
Colorado's vote, the same percentage as Andrews in 1990.

Andrews, like Goldwater,
represents the ideologically purist wing of the Republican party -- a wing
that can control the nomination, but does not necessarily appeal even to
mainstream Republican voters. Just as moderate-conservative Democrat
Lyndon Johnson trounced Goldwater, moderate-conservative Democrat Roy
Romer ran all over Andrews.

Colorado's political and media
establishment mocked Andrews for most of the entire campaign, predicting
that his extremism would lead to a rout. Yet it's unlikely the
Republicans would have done better with anybody else.

In 1986, the Republicans
nominated the antithesis of Andrews -- Senate President Ted Strickland. A
non-ideological political insider, Strickland fights for big government
and against tax limitation. While the Republican establishment mostly
abandoned Andrews in 1990, Strickland in 1986 was showered with Republican
cash. And of course in 1986, candidate Romer did not enjoy the advantages
of incumbency and a huge warchest that Governor Romer did in 1990.

Strickland's performance, with
all the advantages that Andrews lacked? Just 42% -- only 4% better than
Andrews.

And unlike the Strickland
campaign, the Andrews campaign may yet metamorphose into a Republican
triumph. Consider Barry Goldwater's 1964 debacle, which looks more and
more like a victory in retrospect.

One young man who cut his
political teeth on the Goldwater campaign was an Arizona lawyer named
William Rehnquist, now Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

The closing days of the
Goldwater campaign were sparked by a national television address on
Goldwater's behalf, delivered eloquently by an unemployed actor named
Ronald Reagan. The speech launched Reagan's own political career.

Just as President Kennedy had
spurred a generation of liberals into a life of activism, the Goldwater
campaign stirred tens of thousands of dedicated young conservatives. These young conservatives became the core of the network that would one
day propel Ronald Reagan to the Presidency.

One of the reasons that
Goldwater lost so badly was that he wouldn't change his message to fit his
audience. Whether in New York or New Mexico, Goldwater refused to discuss
local issues; instead, he relentlessly hammered his passionate theme of
anti-communism and unregulated capitalism. Goldwater's approach cost him
votes -- but the purity helped build the conservative base in a way that a
more opportunistic strategy never could.

Like Barry Goldwater, John
Andrews ended the campaign with the same anti-government principles he
began with. To anyone who would listen, Andrews preached the gospel of
free choice and free markets. Goldwater had insisted that "extremism in
the defense of liberty is no vice" and Andrews agreed.

Not until the next century will
we know if John Andrews' defeat contains the seeds of some future
conservative victory. In the meantime, Colorado voters of all political
stripes can be happy that in the last Gubernatorial election, they were
presented with real options about the direction of government -- with what
Barry Goldwater called "a choice, not an echo."

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necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an
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